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Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Michael Gove and the school "Academification" process

In the wake of the 2012 Olympic games, Michael Gove's
education department has received a lot of media attention focussing
on three main issues; that he has signed off on plans to concrete
over thirty school playing fields and then lied about it; that he
cancelled the two hours a week minimum sports requirements at the behest of party leader David Cameron and that just days before the
Olympic games began he cancelled minimum outdoor playing space
requirements for schools.

Plenty of much deserved criticism has come from
across the media spectrum, with critical editorials in the Guardian
and the right-wing Telegraph alike. The Telegraph even launched a
"keep
the flame alive" campaign to oppose Gove's attacks on school
sports. Despite all of this negative publicity it should be noted
that the mainstream media are missing a much bigger story; the fact
that Gove has privatised more than half of the secondary schools in
England, playing fields and all.

According to the latest figures,almost
2,000 secondary schools have been transferred to private ownership
under Gove's Academies scheme, which stipulates that in order to
obtain Academy status a school must transfer their property deeds
(including playing fields) to the new private sector education
providers. This process has been a classic example of the
privatisation-by-stealth strategy and the mainstream media has played
right along with it. Even Guardian reports on the "Academisation
process" refer to the transference of state infrastructure to
unaccountable private sector interests in terms of allowing schools
to "enjoy
the greater freedoms that result". Another oft repeated Tory
euphemism for this school privatisation drive is the claim that
becoming an Academy provides "new powers to break free of local
council bureaucracy".

The mainstream media seem
remarkably unwilling to explain in simple terms what becoming an
Academy actually means, preferring instead to recycle content free
soundbytes from Tory party HQ about "greater freedoms" and
"tackling bureaucracy". There only seem to be two plausible
explanations for this media stance; either the majority of mainstream
journalists don't know that £billions worth of state funded
infrastructure is being given away for free as part of the
"Academisation process", or that the majority of
journalists do know what the process actually entails but continue to
use Tory euphemisms to hide the truth from the public because they
actively approve of the school property privatisation agenda and
wouldn't want to undermine the process by spelling out in simple
terms what is actually going on.

One side effect of the "Academisation
process" is that the School Playing Fields Advisory Panel will
have absolutley no powers to advise against the sale of Academy
playing fields, since the freeholds have been transferred to private
sector control. Not that this matters all that much, given that Gove
has repeatedly ignored the panel's findings in order to approve
playing field sales and that he has now revoked minimum requirements
for the teaching of sports and for the provision of outdoor play
space, presumably in order to undermine the panel's ability to
provide any evidence based opposition to future sales at the schools that remain under state ownership.

There has been no formal
process to actually calculate the value of the school properties so
far transferred to private sector ownership, so a rough estimate will
have to do. If we make a conservative estimate that the average value
of these schools (as redevelopment land) could be somewhere in the
region of £5million, the transference of over 1,900 schools would
provide the eye watering figure of £9.5 billion worth of state
infrastructure just given away, and that is before the value of the
actual buildings and school materials are taken into account.

It is also important to note who the beneficiaries
of this Tory largesse have been. Some of the biggest players on the
Academy scene include the Harris Federation, run by and named after
Phil Harris, a Tory peer and the owner of Carpetright. Another key
player on the Academy scene is ARK Academies. The Ark board includes
Paul Marshall, who co-authored the Lib-Dem Orange Book and Stanley
Fink, the current Tory party treasurer who previously donated £2.62
million to the Tory party.

One of the latest additions to the ARK Academies
property portfolio makes a very interesting case. The ink had barely
dried on the deed transfer which passed Elliot school in Wandsworth
from local council ownership to ARK Academies, when
ARK began planning to sell off more than half of the property,
which is described as "surplus land" on the school website.
This "surplus land" contains several sports pitches,
athletics facilities, a kids' nature reserve, an outdoor performance
stage, the school car park and even a memorial tree.

As the mainstream media debates the "Olympic
legacy" and Gove's strategy of approving the sale of sports
fields against expert advice, it is hard not to feel that they are
missing the bigger picture; that by removing nearly 2,000 schools
form "local council bureaucracy" Gove has given these
private interests "greater freedoms" to cash in by selling
off their sports facilities.